[R-pkg-devel] Changes to checks on NEWS?
Thanks for the info, though it seems odd that CRAN wants to parse a plain text file that is purely for information, since it should have no impact on the current package or any other. I suppose there might be character set issues to check. The motive for parsing it eludes me. Does anyone know if there are plans to use NEWS for some purpose in the future i.e., to actually track changes beyond package maintainer's comments? Cheers, and thanks again. JN
On 2023-07-26 10:03, Ivan Krylov wrote:
? Wed, 26 Jul 2023 09:37:38 -0400 J C Nash <profjcnash at gmail.com> ?????:
I'd like to avoid NOTEs if possible, and since I'm using a plain-text NEWS, don't believe this should trigger one.
Plain-text NEWS files are parsed according to the rules specified in
help(news), which is admittedly laconic in its description. If you run
tools:::.news_reader_default('https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/optimx/NEWS')
(or news(package = 'optimx')), you can see that R's news() already
misunderstands some of the contents of your NEWS file.
A relatively recent change (r82543, July 2022) set
_R_CHECK_NEWS_IN_PLAIN_TEXT_=TRUE for R CMD check --as-cran and started
verifying that R's plain text "news reader" function could actually
parse plain-text NEWS files without warnings or errors.
I think that if you rename NEWS to ChangeLog, R will leave the file
alone, but CRAN will offer it to users as plain text.